by Joseph Campbell and Alessandra Prentice
ZAPORIJJIA/MARIOUPOL, Ukraine (Reuters) – Dozens of people arrived safely in Zaporizhia, a town still under Ukrainian authorities’ control, on Tuesday after being evacuated from Mariupol where they had taken refuge for weeks in the Azovstal factory, against which the Russian army launched an assault.
Visibly exhausted, the evacuees from the port city, targeted by the Russian army since the beginning of the offensive launched on February 24, were dropped off by buses in the parking lot of a shopping center in Zaporijjia, a city also located in southern Ukraine, not far from the front lines.
More than 200 civilians are still trapped in the Azovstal steelworks, according to the mayor of Mariupol, Vadim Boitchenko, while some 100,000 civilians are still in the city devastated by the siege and repeated bombardments by Russian forces.
“Thanks to the (evacuation) operation, 101 women, men, children and elderly people were finally able to leave the shelters under Azovstal and see the light of day after two months,” said Osnat Lubrani, humanitarian coordinator for the ‘UN for Ukraine.
The United Nations and the Red Cross coordinated a five-day operation, which began on April 29, to evacuate women, children and the elderly from the factory.
Quoted by the Ukrainian press, a representative of the Mariupol police said that the Russian army launched a new assault on the Azovstal factory on Tuesday, after Russian aircraft bombarded the site during the night, in violation of the ceasefire. -fire.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Ukrainian forces had taken advantage of the ceasefire to establish new firing positions, positions that pro-Russian forces were “beginning to destroy”.
The Azovstal factory is the last bastion of Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol.
Tatiana Bouchlanova, a 64-year-old resident of Mariupol, said she was now so used to Russian shelling that she no longer reacted when shells exploded.
“You wake up in the morning and you cry. You cry at night. I have no idea where to go,” she said, wiping away her tears as she sat near a blackened building.
(Report Joseph Campbell in Zaporijjia, Pavel Polityuk in kyiv, Emma Farge in Geneva; French version Augustin Turpin, edited by Jean Terzian)